


There Will Be No Dawn

by NevillesGran



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Episode 109
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 23:38:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11862033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: As Vecna's clouds spread across Exandria...Snapshots from around the world, as the end of the tale approaches.





	There Will Be No Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Lord of the Rings, because lets be real, so is the cloud cover. I know it's spreading slower in canon than is implied here, but...shhh, #aesthetic.

The clouds reached the western edge of Emon at noon. Standing on the docks in her one of her best robes, a beautiful dark blue thing embroidered with golden stars, Allura watched them come.

For the moment, so did the rest of the dock. Elsewhere in the city, there was fighting—elsewhere on the docks, in fact, if she’d cared to turn her spyglass down the curve of the once-bustling port. But a troop of guards surrounded the Arcanist and her companion, and for the moment, that was still respected. All the ships were in. Nobody wanted to be out in this, whatever _this_ was.

“It’s that Vecna dick, isn’t it?” Kima shifted from foot to foot at Allura’s side, scowling. One hand ran along the blunt end of her maul, but there was nothing to hit here.

“I can’t tell for certain, but…yes.” Allura watched the edges of the cloudbank carefully through her scope. The wind was coming in from the sea, but the unnatural storm was moving faster. Though there was no lightning in this storm, no thunder or rain. Merely faces of the damned, and a deep sense of foreboding, such as she had not felt since the last time Emon fell.

The only time. The _only_ time, Allura corrected her thoughts sternly, and clenched her jaw to stifle the tremble in her lips. Never mind those…nightmares. Any decent wizard could send bad dreams. There was a reason she was out here, down among the people, in her finest robes, and it was so that they could see the Council unflinching.

Kima’s arm wrapped around her waist, steady as always. “Can you dispel it, Allie?”

There was such hope in her voice, such faith, that it filled Allura with more warmth than even the answer could sap away.

“No. This is a greater evocation than any I’ve ever seen.” And with a dark, necrotic edge that made her itch to dive into her spellbooks, to research or to hide, she wasn’t sure.

But her voice didn’t shake like she’d feared it would. And when she lowered her spyglass and looked instead at the guards pale but stalwart around them, and the people of the half-rebuilt city beyond, all staring nervously at her or the sky, she felt herself drawing even more upright.

“It’s just an intimidation tactic,” she explained, loudly enough to be heard by all. “A petty trick from a petty bully. Nothing about those clouds can hurt us here.”

“Yeah!” called Kima, picking up the cue. “What a little weird weather to a city of fuckin’ dragonslayers!”

There were a couple cheers from the haphazard crowd. Allura could have married her all over again.

Instead, she took Kima’s hand and turned around, sweeping her robes behind them.

“Back to the Council now,” she added, still projecting, “to tell them there’s nothing to fear.”

 _I’m not just saying it for the people_ , she Messaged silently to Kima as they strode through the streets. _I wouldn’t want to fly into those, but it’s only a psychological battle, here. The real fight is going to be in Vasselheim._

Kima gripped her hand a little tighter, and didn’t even need to ask if they were going. _They’re going to be total dicks to you, but even Vord won’t turn away an ally in a fight like this._

\- ~ -

Kashaw knew evil. He had kissed evil. He had married evil. Evil had raked its claws down his arm and dug them into his soul and never let go, and he couldn’t take a sip of water or a shit in the woods without knowing that it was because She let him, and approved.

He didn’t have a bad dream—well, it was of Vesh, but no worse than the usual soul-searing torture and watching everyone be loved be gleefully torn to shreds. But it was definitely Vesh.

The clouds on the horizon…weren’t. Yet he felt them before he saw them, before he even opened his eyes, because they were Evil, capital E. As surely as the power that sometimes scoured the marrow of his bones.

“Hey, Z?”

He deliberately knocked Zahra’s shoulder as he sat up in their bedroll. He had to dodge a flying fist—her dreams weren’t easy, either—but she figured her shit out pretty fast.

She propped herself up on her elbows, staring at the approaching clouds with a frown. “Those are moving too fast to be natural. Are they coming from Vasselheim?”

“Think so.”

They’d been heading back since that creepy-ass voice declared itself a god in their heads. But they were still a few days out.

“We’d better get going, then.”

Something deep in Kash’s gut roiled as he squinted up at the clouds. Something that growled at the back of his mind, shivered up his spine, and if it could have been put into words it would have hissed, **_Mine_** at some unseen enemy. But there was an undercurrent of suggestion that, just in case She wasn’t as strong as She thought She was, he should get the fuck away from the coil of storm.

Well, that was about as good as a goddamn divine directive.

He followed Zahra out of the sleeping roll, and folded it up behind them. Fortunately, they hadn’t unpacked much last night.

“Yeah, and you know the Idiots are going to need our help.”

\- ~ -

Vecna, the Whispered One, the Undying King, the God of Secrets and Undeath, stood atop his tower as his new pet titan strode towards the “Cradle of Civilization”, and he Saw through the eye he did not have as his little miracle spread over the world….

-

In Diastok, Maria Darrington sat on the porch and clutched a shawl around her shoulders as she stared up at the writhing clouds, book forgotten in her lap. She hoped that her son was not caught up in this somehow.

-

Kerrick, warrior and community leader and slayer of the Green Dragon, kept his people working, rebuilding a wing of the Cobolt Reserve even grander than before. He circled the building, lending a strong hand here and a guiding hammer strike there, and everywhere he passed, people’s nervous glances upwards ceased. Their backs straightened and they worked with renewed vigor and cheer. Only when he was gone did their gazes drift once more to the faces in the clouds, and their hands shake, memory flickering to dark dreams and darker memories. Westruun had many dead.

Only when he was out of sight of any others did Kerrick sag against a wall and clutch an old holy symbol in his hand, until the metal carved lines in his palm.

-

On the Great Plains of Tal’Dorei, a barbarian hunting party milled around nervously, muttering to one another and casting glances at the sky.

A goliath jumped up on a rock, Zanroar, son of Kevdak. He held his young son gently in the crook of one arm, but he roared as fiercely as his father ever had.

“HEY! Fuck the clouds! Are we gonna stand around like a bunch of pansies, or are we gonna go kill that herd of plainscows we came out here to fuckin’ KILL!”

-

The Guardian of the Jewel of Marquet scryed the clouds before they reached their city, and for a long moment, they sat in silence. Then they stood, eyes for a moment flashing the brightest gold, and called the nearest clever concubine to their side.

“My dear, alert the Hand of Ord, the Chamber of Viziers, the Arcana Pansophical and every major temple in the city—though I’m sure they already know. But I want clerics on the crypts, and everyone on alert while I am gone.”

“Gone, my great one?”

“I am needed in Vasselheim.”

-

In the High Council Chamber of Syngorn, the high elves bickered.

“We must not exhaust the Wards!” one Lady insisted. “It was already a strain to take the city last year, they have not recharged—”

“What are they for, then?” demanded another. “You engineers are all the same, Aelfraeda, so hesitant to risk one thing that you would consign us—”

“Ha!” shouted the High General. “You call her a coward, Yavenna? You are the one who would run. We could be fighting, for once—“

At least three others scoffed.

“You sat out the Battle of Emon with pixie pox _,”_ sneered the Minister of Finance. “We have fought. We do not wish to. We cannot afford to.”

Syldor Vessar, normally one to voice his opinion whenever possible, stood quietly to the side, arms folded across his chest. The growing darkness was all too visible through the window beside him. There is a sense that even the most negligent parents develop, occasionally, of when ones children are getting into extraordinary trouble somewhere.

-

Most of the way across the city and several stories above the Council Chamber, a being shaped like a satyr laid back on the roof of his summer House and watched the sky with interest. At his elbow, a particularly ambitious pixie refilled his fizzy drink. This show, he thought, would inspire some truly great art.

-

In Zephrah, in Terrah, in Pyrah and Vesrah, the druids of the Ashari watched the skies with dark stares, as the dark clouds moved against the prevailing wind.

A particularly foolish son of the Earth turned into an eagle and flew up to investigate them. He fell, shocked back to half-elf form and even unconsciousness by the clouds’ writhing necrotic energy. A friend transformed as well and flew up to catch him, and four different druids cast Feather Fall on the pair before they hit the ground.

The people of Pyrah, bolstered by their sibling tribes but still so few, clustered around their Rift. They would not be caught off-guard again.

The Heart of the Tides stood not on a rock but on the waves themselves, and slammed her staff down onto the water with a shout. The sea responded to her call and roared up around her, bearing her aloft. The spray turned to mist, to clouds and rain; lightning and thunder cracked through the air and the winds howled in response as her hurricane grew.

From a distance, a ship of the Tempest Fang looked on, hearts filled with that particular terror overrun by savage glee that can only be found in those watching a known, familiar horror defeat a new, strange one. They did not see the wrinkled gnome at the eye of the storm, nor the druids who rose up around her, on likewise columns of water. They did not hear the water genasi who shouted, “Now!” as the Heart’s storm punched a glimmer of a hole in the looming clouds, through sheer force of her will.

They did see the bursts of sunlight, blazing through the hurricane. They did see the rainbows that arced over the Ozmit Sea for miles, as sun met storm met the glowering, stygian, cloud of undeath—and it was the undeath that retreated. Cheers erupted from the deck.

And then the faces in the cloud bellowed, soundless, and swarmed back over their briefly lost patch of sky. Still they were silent, but necrotic energy crackled across the roiling billows, and nor did the pirates see an old, wrinkled gnome fall from the sky. The genasi caught her, and a wave her staff, but the hurricane faded to drizzle around the Anamn Islands.

Amid the peaks of Zephra, just below the storm that wasn’t, Korran stood and wished his wife was beside him, simply for someone to hold.

“Be safe, Keyleth,” he murmured.

\- ~ -

Cassandra did not remember dozing off over her paperwork, but she must have because she knew she was dreaming, now. She dashed through Whitestone’s halls and her footsteps left prints in the dust, dust that had never in her life coated the floors. Dust and ashes. They covered the stones, the paintings, the tapestries of the Five Guardians and the Great Tree.

She ran down the secret passageway to the dungeon, the one she had crawled through to find Percy all those years ago, but in the way of dreams, it led back to her childhood bedroom.

Delilah was sitting on the bed.

“Cassandra, darling,” she said, and stood. She was just as pale and beautiful as when Cassandra had killed her, red hair and redder lips. She wore robes, now, though, instead of a dress, clasped at her throat with a broach in the design of a silver eye. It glared as Delilah smiled.

“I’ll see you again soon,” she promised, coming forward. “I’ve been promised that. When the Undying King rules all, I will have you back, and Whitestone, and even your brother and his awful friends. Won’t that be wonderful, my dear?”

It was the sort of thing she would have said before, but there was an extra edge to it, now. A blazing rage banked behind her smile.

Cassandra, as usual, could relate. And this was _her_ dream, damn it, so there was a rapier in her hand and she lunged forward (like she’d learned in the Rebellion, like Sylas had taught her with his biting longsword.) She struck, and struck again.

“I will not be so kind the second time,” Delilah snarled, suddenly too close. She slapped Cassandra’s face.

The force of it snapped her head back, sent pain lancing through her mind. For a moment, everything was dark—

Cassandra jerked awake. She was in her office, at her desk, surrounded by warm light and stacks of grain reports. Pain still ricocheted through her head, but there was a half-eaten afternoon tea at her side, and nothing was out of the ordinary.

A guard skidded to a halt outside the door, and she could hear them nervously salute her Rifleman-on-guard. “Captain Kynan, sir, there’s something– Lady Cassandra should—”

Cassandra was out of her chair and through the door before he finished stuttering. “What is it?”

“Outside,” was all the nervous guard could say.

Outside, it was. Outside was…should have been a sunny late afternoon, the sun stretching over the western peaks and turning the white stone gold. But the sun had been devoured, consumed by a gloom that crawled across the sky as Cassandra watched, casting the entire valley in a storm-dark shadow. A darkness of spirit seemed to settle from it as well, dulling colors and setting fears alight.

It was not unfamiliar. The people of Whitestone knew necromantic clouds.

The faces, though, were new. There was just enough light to see them, as white-black energy crackled through the clouds. The first few, she did not recognize, but then—

There was a tanner who had died in the first rebellion, in her first battle. There was a young woman she had watched Sylas drain and then toss to the floor like so much garbage.

There was Mother. There was Father. There was Ludwig, splitting in two, and Vesper screaming silently as she fell, and—

Cassandra tore her gaze away when another face she didn’t recognize took her sister’s place. A guardswoman a few feet to her right mouthed, “ _No_ ,” though, tears in his eyes. There were several out here on the front steps, away from their posts.

“It’s just the dead,” Cassandra said harshly. She repeated it, pitching her voice to carry. “It’s just the dead! Just some new bastard trick, meant to…”

 _Flash_. Julius, his face twisted in pain. _Flash_. Oliver and Whitney, pulled apart, dissolving back into the writhing clouds.

She waited, breath held, but there was no other face she knew. Not from her family, at least. She had a painfully accurate memory of every Whitestoner she had ever gotten killed.

“Vax’ildan’s crypt for the Raven Queen,” Kynan said softly. “Will that– will she protect the city from undead?”

Cassandra gripped the hilt of her blade until it hurt. Until it gave her something to focus on. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. We burn all our dead, now.”

She lifted her chin and smoothed out her skirts. There was still an ache in her head, some nasty magical aftereffect of the dream, but a de Rolo did not falter.

“I do want to speak with Keeper Yennan,” she told him, “and any other cleric who is available. And assemble the council. We need to be ready for…anything.”

But she couldn’t stop her eyes from dragging back to the clouds before she swept back indoors. The pall they cast was grey-green, the worst sort of storm about to break. But still, no new, familiar faces appeared.

“Don’t die, brother,” Cassandra whispered. Her hand drifted to her rapier again, as if she could lend her sword arm from afar. “Kill her dead this time, and the lord she serves, and _come home_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Review suggestion (feed me, Seymour): which was your favorite snippet and why? Concrit always welcome!


End file.
